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In the summer of 1924 there was said to be no place ‘kooler’ than the Ku Klux Klan’s ‘Kool Koast Kamp’ – strictly depending on who you asked. Seen in a shocking brochure advertising a four-month resort to KKK members outside the coastal community of Rockport, Texas, is the Klansmens’ self-described ‘Healthiest road to the Koolest Summer.’ Set between a monstrous cross and rippling waves along the shore, guests are illustrated bathing and lying along the beach before tents and boardwalks strictly for white, conservative Christians.

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Mysterious light blamed for circle of fire

Tasmanian police and firefighters are unable to explain the source of a beam of light which reportedly fell from the sky and formed a circle of fire in a Hobart suburb. Early Saturday morning police and fire crews received calls from concerned residents in Carnegie Street at Claremont, who reported seeing a bright light igniting a fire in a nearby paddock. Tasmania Fire Service officer Scott Vinen says the blaze was quickly put out, leaving an obvious burnt patch. He says the bizarre incident has everyone baffled. “Once we put the fire out, we kind of walked through the fire and tried to find something,” he said. “We thought a flare or something may have landed there, but we couldn’t find any cause.” The Fire Service says it will not investigate further.

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Peter B. Bensinger, the apparent spokesman for the group, told the AP, “the supremacy of federal law over state law when it comes to drug laws isn’t in doubt.” He added, “It is outrageous that a lawsuit hasn’t been filed in federal court yet.” It turns out Peter B. Bensinger, who in the letter is representing the lobbying organization Save Our Society from Drugs, has a huge financial stake in preventing the legalization of cannabis. He is the founder and CEO of a drug testing company.

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State and local governments nationwide have struggled to accommodate a homeless population that has changed in recent years – now including large numbers of families with young children. As the WSJ reports, more than 21,000 children – an unprecedented 1% of the city’s youth – slept each night in a city shelter in January, an increase of 22% in the past year; as homeless families now spend more than a year in a shelter, on average, for the first time since 1987. New York City has seen one of the steepest increases in homeless families in the past decade, advocates said, growing 73% since 2002, and “is facing a homeless crisis worse than any time since the Great Depression.”

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Facebook has never been merely a social platform. Rather, it exploits our social interactions the way a Tupperware party does. Facebook does not exist to help us make friends, but to turn our network of connections, brand preferences, and activities over time — our “social graphs” — into a commodity for others to exploit. We Facebook users have been building a treasure lode of big data that government and corporate researchers have been mining to predict and influence what we buy and whom we vote for. We have been handing over to them vast quantities of information about ourselves and our friends, loved ones and acquaintances. With this information, Facebook and the “big data” research firms purchasing their data predict still more things about us – from our future product purchases or sexual orientation to our likelihood for civil disobedience or even terrorism.

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Lexington Police warned residents Monday of a scam in which a man in a wheelchair pretends to have a mental disability in order to get people to give him money, and soon after an LEX 18 reporter caught the alleged scammer in the act. Police say the man, Gary Thompson, 30, does have the need for the use of a wheelchair, but is also able to get out of it. They say that he has been spotted at several Lexington shopping centers, including the Lansdowne Shoppes, Hamburg and several places along Nicholasville Road. On Monday, police held a news conference to put out the information about Thompson. After the news conference was over, Thompsonn was spotted by an LEX 18 reporter who had just attended the news conference. The reporter, Kristen Pflum, said that she called to Thompson, who she says immediately went into his mental disability scam. When Pflum informed Thompson she had just attended a press conference about him, she says he immediately dropped the act and said, “Alright, you got me.”

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For over 12 centuries an intense battle has been fought between the code-makers and the code-breakers. We previously talked about some ciphers that have been defeated and the impact it had. However, despite decades (or centuries!) of cryptanalysis there are many ciphertexts which still successfully conceal their contents. Here’s a roundup of my top ten, with links to groups actively tackling them provided where possible.

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Matthew Matagrano (pictured at right), was not an inmate during the period. The 36-year-old former resident of Yonkers and South Ozone Park is listed as a high-risk sex offender in the state’s registry. Matagrano has a record of convictions for sodomy, first-degree sex abuse, burglary, and, not surprisingly, criminal impersonation. He has been arrested more than a dozen times, and has served several stints on Rikers. At his size, 5-foot-8 and 340 pounds, Matagrano shouldn’t have been so hard to miss. But he somehow was able to make or obtain a shield and a department identification card, and not only roam at least five facilities but obtain a sensitive Gate One all-access pass that allowed him to bring his car onto the island. He also is believed to have stolen at least two special correction department radios. Correction sources say the sheer number of security breakdowns alone that allowed this to happen is dizzying.

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A Brooklyn man faked his own kidnapping because he was terrified of his lover’s wrath. Rahmell Pettway, 36, told cops he spent two weeks away from his Bedford-Stuyvesant home — and then staged the crime to explain his absence to his girlfriend. But his poorly executed plan unraveled when the cops who found him hog-tied in the street noticed the roll of duct tape still dangling from his wrists. He eventually came clean, and was arrested for filing a false report.

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The red or yellow coloured tablets are being sold as ecstasy and have a star impression on them. “The exact contents of the pills are unknown, but they could, from past experience, contain a cocktail of different substances,” say police. Continue reading the main story “ Start Quote Users need to be aware of the dangers and understand the potentially devastating effect these pills can have” Chief Insp Fraser Lamb Strathclyde Police An investigation has been launched by the police along with health officials and medical staff. Chief Insp Fraser Lamb said: “These substances are unreliable, unpredictable and potentially very dangerous. “Users may believe that they have taken ecstasy and it is very likely that they will suffer from a significant negative reaction.

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New research shows that alcohol is now the third leading cause of the global burden of disease and injury — this even though most adults worldwide abstain from drinking. Researchers discovered the relationship while preparing the 2010 Global Burden of Disease study, a report published in the journal Addiction. “Alcohol consumption has been found to cause more than 200 different diseases and injuries,” said Kevin Shield, doctoral student and lead author of the study. “These include not only well-known outcomes of drinking such as liver cirrhosis or traffic accidents, but also several types of cancer, such as female breast cancer.”

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A new study by Canadian academics says Mother Teresa was a product of hype who housed the poor and sick in shoddy conditions, despite her access to a fortune. The Times of India, reporting on the controversial essay, wrote that the authors asserted Mother Teresa saw beauty in the downtrodden’s suffering and was far more willing to pray for them than provide practical medical care. Meanwhile, researchers say, the Vatican engaged in a PR ploy as it threw aside concerns about her suspicious financial dealings and contacts to forgo the five-year waiting period to beatify her. One of the researchers, Serge Larivee of the University of Montreal’s department of psychoeducation, told the school’s website, “Given the parsimonious management of Mother Teresa’s works, one may ask where the millions of dollars for the poorest of the poor have gone?”

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American neighborhoods are increasingly being policed by cops armed with the weapons and tactics of war. Federal funding in the billions of dollars has allowed state and local police departments to gain access to weapons and tactics created for overseas combat theaters – and yet very little is known about exactly how many police departments have military weapons and training, how militarized the police have become, and how extensively federal money is incentivizing this trend. It’s time to understand the true scope of the militarization of policing in America and the impact it is having in our neighborhoods. On March 6th, ACLU affiliates in 23 states filed over 255 public records requests with law enforcement agencies and National Guard offices to determine the extent to which federal funding and support has fueled the militarization of state and local police departments. Stay tuned as this project develops.

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Using banned ingredients that other countries have determined unsafe for human consumption has become a pandemic in this country. To prove this point, I found the best and easiest place to look for evidence was just across “the pond” in the United Kingdom, where they enjoy some of the same types of products we do – but with totally different ingredient lists. It is appalling to witness the examples I am about to share with you. The U.S. food corporations are unnecessarily feeding us chemicals – while leaving out almost all questionable ingredients in our friends’ products overseas. The point is the food industry has already formulated safer, better products, but they are voluntarily only selling inferior versions of these products here in America. The evidence of this runs the gamut from fast food places to boxed cake mix to cereal to candy and even oatmeal – you can’t escape it.

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You think the FDA has your back? Sure, they recently proposed two new regulations to up food safety measures, specifically how food processors and farmers can work better to keep their fresh products free of dangerous bacteria (remember that killer cantaloupe outbreak from 2011?). But while it may seem like the government is out to protect us from bad-even fatal-food-borne illnesses, which cause some 3,000 deaths a year, they don’t completely have our best interest-or health-in mind. “For numerous suspicious and disturbing reasons, the U.S. has allowed foods that are banned in many other developed countries into our food supply,” says nutritionist Mira Calton who, together with her husband Jayson Calton, Ph.D., wrote the new book Rich Food, Poor Food due out this February. During a six-year expedition that took them to 100 countries on seven continents, the Caltons studied more than 150 ingredients and put together a comprehensive list of the top 13 problematic products that are…

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It’s a new day for the New York Police Department, with technology increasingly informing the way cops do their jobs. With innovation comes new possibilities but also new concerns. For one, the NYPD is testing a new type of security apparatus that uses terahertz radiation to detect guns under clothing from a distance. As Police Commissioner Ray Kelly explained to the Daily News back in January, If something is obstructing the flow of that radiation — a weapon, for example — the device will highlight that object. Ignore, for a moment, the glaring constitutional concerns, which make the stop-and-frisk debate pale in comparison: virtual strip-searching, evasion of probable cause, potential racial profiling. Organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union are all over those, even though their opposition probably won’t make a difference. We’re scared of both terrorism and crime, even as the risks decrease; and when we’re scared, we’re willing to give up all sorts of freedoms…

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The young couple accused of stealing multiple police cars from two cities and leading authorities on a high-speed chase through two states Tuesday morning, have been identified as Blake Bills and Shayna Sykes. “I never heard of anyone stealing two police cars in one incident,” said Philadelphia Deputy Police Commissioner Richard Ross.

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Media reports have detailed the playboy lifestyle enjoyed by Nicholas Webber, GhostMarket’s founder, who had only just turned 18 at the time of his arrest in October 2009. Webber was sentenced to five years imprisonment in May 2011, and found himself at HM Prison Isis, a Category C male Young Offenders Institution, in South East London. Normally you would expect (and hope) a hacker’s criminal career to end there, but sadly that wasn’t to be. As the Daily Mail reports, Webber somehow managed to sign-up for the prison’s IT class, and from there managed to hack into the prison’s mainframe computer. According to the report, a spokesman for the prison service has confirmed that Webber was involved in the hack, but has downplayed the significance of the hack: “At the time of this incident in 2011 the educational computer system at HMP Isis was a closed network. No access to personal information or wider access to the internet or other prison systems would have been possible.”

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The New York City Police Department has embarked on a novel approach to deter juvenile robbers, essentially staging interventions and force-feeding outreach in an effort to stem a tide of robberies by dissuading those most likely to commit them. Officers not only make repeated drop-ins at homes and schools, but they also drive up to the teenagers in the streets, shouting out friendly hellos, in front of their friends. The force’s Intelligence Division also deciphers each teenager’s street name and gang affiliation. Detectives compile a binder on each teenager that includes photos from Facebook and arrest photos of the teenager’s associates, not unlike the flow charts generated by law enforcement officials to track organized crime.

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A man was jailed over the weekend on an assault charge for allegedly biting a 16-year-old girl on her buttocks in downtown Dallas, according to police documents. Shortly before 6 p.m. on Saturday, a Dallas police officer parked near the downtown Greyhound bus station heard a girl scream and man laughing, according to police records. The cop turned in the direction of the scream and spotted a man later identified as David Paul Olienyk, 38, laughing as he ran through traffic toward the bus station in the 200 block of South Lamar Street. The officer drove toward the victim, who appeared to be crying. A person with her told the officer, “He bit her on the butt!” Thanks Jasmine

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But there is reason to worry about this approaching revolution. As smart technologies become more intrusive, they risk undermining our autonomy by suppressing behaviors that someone somewhere has deemed undesirable. Smart forks inform us that we are eating too fast. Smart toothbrushes urge us to spend more time brushing our teeth. Smart sensors in our cars can tell if we drive too fast or brake too suddenly. These devices can give us useful feedback, but they can also share everything they know about our habits with institutions whose interests are not identical with our own. Insurance companies already offer significant discounts to drivers who agree to install smart sensors in order to monitor their driving habits. How long will it be before customers can’t get auto insurance without surrendering to such surveillance? And how long will it be before the self-tracking of our health (weight, diet, steps taken in a day) graduates from being a recreational novelty to a virtual requirement

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As a collective we must understand that democracy can only exist in a society with an educated populace, and the right for self-governance can only be obtained through knowledge. When a society embraces ignorance and forfeits its right to control its destiny, it has succumbed to apathy and can only deteriorate. In science, the analysis of anomalies contributes to our understanding of the physical world, improving our lives. In contrast, identifying anomalies in our society based on political doctrine has created fear and misunderstanding, restricting our lives. The lack of accountability from our leaders and our indifference to the consequences of their actions is diminishing our civil liberties. But it is not too late, we can prevent this from happening. We still have the ability to reclaim our future if we begin to educate ourselves.

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Around 40 percent of Palliative Health’s clients are tech workers, says Ernie Arreola, 38, the assistant manager. “We’re seeing people from some semiconductors, lots of engineers, lots of programmers,” he says. That makes sense, because the shop is an easy shot from some of the area’s biggest employers—Cisco Systems (CSCO), Google (GOOG), Adobe Systems (ADBE), Apple (AAPL), EBay (EBAY)—and a short drive from dozens more. Also, people in Silicon Valley do like their pot.

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In what is sure to be only the beginning of human vs. robot confrontations, a surveillance robot belonging to the police was recently shot after a six-hour standoff with a 62-year-old heavily inebriated man.

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7-year-old Josh Welch was eating a Pop-Tart at school. A teacher saw the pastry and said she thought it looked like it was being shaped into a gun. The teacher also said she heard Welch say, “Bang Bang” while he was holding it. That was enough to get him suspended. Welch said his teacher got it completely wrong, “It was already a rectangle and I just kept on biting it and tore off the top, and it kind of looked like a gun but it wasn’t.” Welch said he was trying to shape the Pop-Tart into a mountain. The school sent out a letter late in the day to parents explaining what happened and why they thought it was a threat saying, “A student used food to make an inappropriate gesture.”

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As Flatly described the images displayed on video monitors in federal court in Manhattan, some jurors put hands to their mouths. One shook her head. Another wiped his brow. One cannibalism website allegedly visited by Valle promised customers they would “only receive the highest quality human beef.” The jury also heard how the officer allegedly looked up “how to tie up a girl,” “human meat recipes,” “how to chloroform a girl,” “I want to sell a girl slave,” “how to cook a girl,” “death fetish” and “huge cooking tray” among other topics the defense says were part of a fetish fantasy that never posed a real threat. The FBI analysis of Valle’s laptop yielded an apparently staged video of a naked, screaming woman hanging over an open flame that lashed close to her skin. Flatly did not say where the video might have originated. There also were several photos of women with bright red apples stuffed in their mouths.

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The six-year NYPD veteran predicted that Sauer — a friend from his college days — was “going to be delicious” and said he wanted to use her head “as a centerpiece, frozen with her final expression of fear.” “I just enjoy the thought of making her suffer,” Valle wrote. Meanwhile, Moody Blues, identified in court as Christopher Collins, told Valle he wanted to dine on Sauer’s liver, “lightly cooked to keep it sweet and tender.” Acting like a mentor to a novice cannibal, Moody Blues said he had already eaten two women, while Valle wrote, “I’m dying to taste some girl meat.” Valle, 28, expressed a fascination for feet, and Moody Blues suggested cutting off one woman’s feet “and barbecuing them in front of her” while she was still alive. Moody Blues said face meat is “great for sandwiches,” and noted, “As for feet they are favorite of mine along with the c–t fillet.” He also offered Valle culinary tips, such as brushing human skin with olive oil while cooking it over an open fire

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A growing body of research has credited the power of positive thinking for contributing to good health and a longer, happier life. But a new study out of Germany suggests people who are pessimistic about their futures — specifically older people — may find greater life satisfaction down the road than their more optimistic peers. “The optimists are those who basically close their eyes, shut their eyes and don’t really want to know about the truth” about the inevitable costs of aging and death, he said. “That’s how we interpreted this finding — that basically these things [pessimistic expectations] really help people to be aware that they need to be cautious.”

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School of Visual Arts MFA student Marc Bradley Johnson was all set to debut his final piece, titled Take This Sperm and Be Free of Me, before health concerns thwarted everything he’d worked so hard for. First, Johnson accessed his materials. Then he set up a refrigerator at SVA’s Visual Arts Gallery in Chelsea, loaded it with 68 vials of his own semen, and put up a Craigslist ad alerting the public that anyone could walk in and take a part of him home. It was about “creation, parenting, desire, masculinity, fantasy, and reality,” he said. But his liberal Manhattan art school just saw dangerous waste.

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That’s the advice from the DIY jihad section in the latest issue of al-Qaida’s English-language web magazine, Inspire. The new “Open Source Jihad” (.pdf) is all about vehicular vandalism. One suggestion, penned by “Ibnul Irhab” in the new issue of Inspire, is to run up on parked cars with gas cans and a matchstick. “How safe will the West feel when parking their cars, knowing they’re up for a TORCHING,” Irhab writes. His helpful tips: avoid CCTV cameras; hide the gas in an apple juice bottle; and, importantly, “don’t get petrol on yourself.” This is what Open Source Jihad bills as “America’s worst nightmare.” Nor is it safe to drive to the store or the office. Inspire encourages the inspired to smear “lubricative oil” on roadways right before sharp blind turns to cause a traffic accident. (“Demolition Derby Style,” it promises.) If that doesn’t sound terrorist-y enough, another tip is to hammer nails into a pegboard painted black so oncoming cars blow out their tires. There’s even…